And it's true. You are widely perceived as a good 'un. On a continuum of early-2000s teen queen badness, you are at one end and Lindsay Lohan is perhaps at the other, with all the other ex-Disney divaettes scattered somewhere in between. You are the Teflon starlet. Even getting your rack out in Brokeback Mountain went more-or-less unnoticed. (Although, hello, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger getting it on was always going to be hard to upstage.)

Slinking around in Catwoman mode didn't shift the good-girl image. (Didn't work for Michelle Pfeiffer either, for what it's worth.) And you are to date the only star to have emerged from anupskirt shot scandalwith more dignity than before, as well as a canny plug for your latest film. That's kind of awesome.

It may well be that, in your private life, you are far from vanilla. Maybe you're more biker chick than white-bread babe. It may be that the Anne we see, a confection of latter-day Audrey Hepburn girlishness and Katherine Hepburn steel, is not who you feel you really are.

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But the media has its mind made up. (Playing Fantine in Les Mis, the holy-prostitute-mother-victim, will hardly encourage people to change their minds about you.) As frustrating as that may be, it's not a terrible thing. In fact some might say the road forward is a charmed one: you can act, you can sing, you can fill out a frock, you're still going strong in a business that would have chewed up and spit out a lesser lady by now. You're even thedefault Wikipedia entry for "Anne Hathaway"- over Shakespeare's wife, who is long since relegated to a disambiguation page. That's not just big, that's huge.

While it is true we can only ever be who we really are, it is also true we can only ever appear to be who the media decides we are. So just go with it. Embrace it. Enjoy the fact that you can do anything you want and still look like a nice person at the same time. Now may be the time to, say, start a puppy farm if you were so inclined, or get a few dozen tattoos, or run for Congress – the public will forgive and forget. You will still be untouchable. You've earned a kind of leeway other folks would kill for.

And hey - if you get the chance - it's not too late for a Princess Diaries 3, you know. Your public loves you.